Some narratives have a funny way of dictating our individual decisions. I think most of my peers will identify with the one I moved through high school with: Study your butt off to get into the best (i.e. most prestigious) college possible in order to get the best (i.e. most prestigious/highest paid) job after college in order to live in a house exactly like or better than your parents', so your kids can do the same.
Forget about self-care while you’re at it; sacrifice the present for a higher quality of life later. Of course, if you get into any of the high-paid, prestigious professions, you’ll be working 60+ hours a week, but this is still the best thing you can do. Obviously, this is an exaggeration and an oversimplification; most of the time, the narrative in my head didn’t go beyond the fact that the be all end all was to do well on the next test for reasons that went unexamined.
That being said, the basic sentiment of dismissing one’s current happiness for a higher payoff later was essential. Now, as my last year of college approaches and I start to consider GRE’s and grad schools and, terrifyingly, a career, I feel the same mindset creeping in. This time, however, it has less to do with prestige, but it retains elements of sacrificing the present for the future. The most present question on my mind has been simply, where will I be after I graduate?
After spending a year in Paris away from my family and friends, I’ve realized that, really, my top priority is day-to-day happiness and, above all, human connection. But not just any human connection. I want to be around the people I care most about. I have two extremely close group of friends, one from high school and one from college, and a family I love and want to be near to. Yet everywhere I look, I read things like “opportunities will be best for those willing to relocate,” and hear adults talking about how hard it is to make friends after college, or my peers lamenting how far they will be from each other.
Still, there seems to be a general (and problematic) assumption that all people are interchangeable except your significant other. For some reason, it is valid to move somewhere with your significant other despite all other relationships you have, but it is strange and rarely considered OK to make a location decision based on platonic relationships. I often hear you will make new friends wherever you go or that your colleagues will become your main relationships, but that doesn’t work for me. All people are not interchangeable. I have deep, already formed relationships I am simply not OK with severing. This is not to be so close-minded as to say I don’t want to make more friends wherever I go, hopefully and especially wherever I work, but it is too much to consider leaving all that love behind me.
Life is short. A year is a long time to be lonely. Yet the assumption is that, after college, I will make the best decision for my career, regardless of where my friends and entire network of human connection will be. Personally, I have come to the point in my life where, while a career in something I am passionate about is a priority, my main priority is to be happy and surrounded by love on a daily basis. And for me, that means living near my network of people. Not just any network of people, my network of people.
That’s not to say there aren’t advantages to moving around while you’re young and finding the best place for you to be. For me, there is a world of difference between someone who actively and intentionally chooses to move elsewhere because that will make them happy and someone who is moved somewhere they don't necessarily want to be, by practicality or normality. Personally, the people I am with will always be far more important than geographic location could ever be. I will not choose to be lonely for my career. It's not worth it.
The happiest cultures tend to be the ones that valorize community, yet we live in a society that is often individualistic and isolating. That’s why when I make a job decision after graduation, I want it to be a holistic one — one that accounts for platonic and romantic relationships, quality of life, daily happiness and satisfaction. To some, this may make me sound like an idealistic millennial, but I see it as not allowing an assumed expectation to determine the way I live my life.
